I've done this with women.
Changing to less expensive gear.
Have you ever traded a good but more expensive piece of gear for a cheaper and better sounding piece?
Comments are often made buy people with less expensive gear that what they have is good enough for the price. The implication is that more expensive gear does not provide better sound.
So this question, hopefully approaches this from another angle. I have never sold higher priced gear to get better sounding cheaper gear, but I'm not saying it cannot be done. What has been your experience?
Comments are often made buy people with less expensive gear that what they have is good enough for the price. The implication is that more expensive gear does not provide better sound.
So this question, hopefully approaches this from another angle. I have never sold higher priced gear to get better sounding cheaper gear, but I'm not saying it cannot be done. What has been your experience?
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Honestly, I DID DOWNGRADE my cassette deck. I went from a 1985 Pioneer Elite CT-A9X cassette deck, which in 1988 listed for $900, I paid $535 for it total. I bought the NEW version CT-W616 consumer deck in 1999. It`s digital, so it REMOVES ALL THE TAPE HISS! The signal-to-noice ratio with the digital a-d/d-a converter is 82db, and that`s WITHOUT THE DOLBY B/C ON. I paid $229 for that. It sounds BETTER, cause there`s NO tape hiss! I listen to ALOT more cassettes now. |
Nrchy: We seem to be weighing in on the same threads. I have two systems that I primarily use ... a higher end Musical Fidelity system and a mid-fi NAD/SONY system. I use the same speakers in each system ... I own 2 pair of Acoustic Research 302 Classic Series speakers ... so the ultimate sound is pretty similar. The speaker placement is very different and that causes some sound differences. But, I can also hear clear distinctions between the two systems and I am very satisfied with how both systems sound. With that being said, my NAD/SONY set-up gives me 85% of the Musical Fidelity set-up ... so I could effectively downgrade the MF system with less expensive equipment (i.e.: buy a Music Hall Mambo Class A integrated amp and pair it with a Music Hall MMF CD 25 cd player, that I already own) and I would probably wind up with 90/95% of my MF system sound. The ONLY thing that stops me from doing this, is that I paid about 45% for the MF equipment on closeout, but it was also brand new. So downgrading buys me nothing at this point, but I could have achieved pretty much the same sound with less costly equipment. <<< The implication is that more expensive gear does not provide better sound. <<< This is where I would disagree. More expensive gear CAN provide better sound. But to my mind, the 80/20 rule plays big here. The question becomes ... does the incremental difference in performance justify the price difference? I might also add, is there also a need, for our own sanity, to rationalize the typical huge extra expense that chasing down the remaining 20% in performance entails? I do not make light of the pleasure that achieving near audio nirvana can provide, but dropping an additional $10 to 20K in the process, is something to examine, as well. I purchased the MF equipment mostly because of the excellent sale price that I was given. So many of the Agon members buy their equipment used. This is why we own the high end equipment in the first place. If we were to limit our purchases to only new and to only list price ... our discussions might look more like an excursion through the Crutchfield catalog , as opposed to the Upscale Audio web-site (btw, both first rate, exceptional companies). To your point, there is truly a fair bit of moderately priced, mid-fi gear out there that gets you a lot closer to the high end than most would care to admit. Engage someone like Roy Hall (Music Hall products) in this discussion and he will tell you that so many of the high end products are unique, but terrible sounding. Granted, Roy's business is in providing great sounding, but moderately priced products. So, yes ... you can downgrade and get equal/better sounding gear. I would add that it is not that difficult to do. Regards, Rich |
I've done it over and over again with cables, amps and preamps. Aside from my TT setup, I've save over 70% of my original setup with better results after 3 years of gear changing. Again, this is subjective view based on my system and my own findings. Cables: DYI interconnects, power cords and speaker cables. I used to own $$$$ cables until I was able to make my own with similar and some even better results. No need to mention brands here but I've tried over 50 different cables out there before I settled for the best combination. After that, I made my own cables which can produce similar results. Amps: Vintage. Hidden treasures from the golden tube era. Blew most of today's high price amps away. However, speaker matching is required before one can decide if the amp is good or bad. preamps: Vintage + mod. Again, hidden treasures from the golden tube era. It might required a little work to revive them to its original state. The end result is astonishing. It beats most of the preamps that's 2 to 10 times of its price. I'm not able to do it with source. CD player: IMHO, Cheap ones will never be better than a better one. Compared over and over again with all the CD players from $50 DVD players to $6000 CD players. However, once you get to certain price level, the differences become much less. TT setup: The differences between my $600 setup vs my $10,000 setup is so big that I almost felt out of my chair. The right combination with turntable, tonearm, cartridge, phono cables and phono stages and step up devices is very critical. I guess this is where I invested most. I don't think I can make a better tonearm or cartridge myself. I know I can still upgrade my turntable but the improvement will not be dramatic. I also don't see myself spending additional $5K+ on a TT by itself. Tuner: This is also tough. I have yet to find a better sounding tuner under $1500 than my MR71. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough but I don't use it as often as the other sources so it is okay. |
"The implication is that more expensive gear does not provide better sound". I think this is not the implication. Rather, I think that the implication is that wise choice is more important than a large wallet, and that more expensive is not necessarily better. To use a car analogy the Cadillac Escalade is an expensive car, but I think it's a total piece of crap in terms of its engineering. The Honda Civic is much, much less expensive but I think it's a vastly superior piece of engineering. However I am prepared to believe that it is possible to spend $50k on a car and get a car that is substantially better than a civic. |
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